This one definitely goes under the category of : "This Week's Sign of The Apocalypse."The opening few paragraphs of the following AP article says all you need to know:http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120828/sports/sports7.html
the AP wrote:
To ensure there is no cheating at the Paralympics, officials will be testing not just for the usual banned drugs, but for a practice called boosting, where wheelchair athletes do things like break a toe to cause a blood pressure spike to enhance performance.
In able-bodied athletes, intense physical exercise automatically raises the heart rate and blood pressure. Athletes with a severe spinal cord injury, however, don't get that natural boost.
To get a rapid rise in blood pressure, wheelchair-bound athletes may resort to another solution: inducing a state called autonomic dysreflexia. That is a reflex that occurs when the lower part of their body is exposed to painful stimuli, like filling the bladder to capacity, using tight leg straps, or sitting on a sharp object.
Actually I take that back - there is more that is shocking.
the AP wrote:
According to a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), about 10 out of 60 athletes surveyed at the Beijing Paralympics admitted having boosted at a major competition..
"There's a limit to how we can test for this," Spence said.
"We can't really ask people to drop their trousers so we can check there's nothing unusual in there," he said, noting they have found competitors who stuck pins into their testicles to get the desired effect.